I'm doing clean up on my first scene done in TVP. I'm making it look as hand drawn as possible and I'm worried the lines that I am using might be a bit light (grey not black) and also slightly soft (i.e. out of focus). I need to see what it will look like when I do a final export. So my question is what are the settings for the best quality export of the projects, so I can export a test? I want it to be the best quality possible as it will end up on cinema screens (I hope).

The project size I am working to is 2880 x 1620 at 25 frames per second. I have been advised to work at 3100 x 1800 which allows area to work outside of the final field area so will for the next scene.

If anybody can advise me about all the best project settings that I should be using that would be great. Thanks.

The project size seems OK. Just bear in mind that downscaling from this size to 1920x1080 also makes the lines finer, which may be your intention or not.

The "best quality" doesn't exist, there's only a best setting for each purpose. I can export a lossless video file, but my computer might not be able to play it back in realtime. (My new Mac does it, thankfully.)

So I use any lossless codec only for files which go elsewhere, into other software (my editing suite), or to the customer (broadcast station), or to my video service provider (making a DCP).

For just checking animation and timing I export to h.264 which makes small files and will play back in real time. It also makes all images pale, so don't judge your colours from a h.264 video ever!

If you work on a Mac, Apple's ProRes codec is reliable in terms of colour and detail and playback even in original HDTV size.

As for lines not being black enough: I have the same problem right now. What I do is: I duplicate the line layer and adjust the duplicate's opacity to my taste. You also may try to set a line layer to multiply.

Generally speaking, TVP's export is very "what you see is what you get." When you are zoomed in to the canvas at 100%, the final film should look no better or worse (i.e., no blurrier or grayer) than that. I use the AVI (internal) at Quality: 100 and Mode: RGBA when I want to render a movie file out of TVP directly. This produces a video with excellent fidelity to the working file for my purposes.

I've only seen people exporting png sequences (and in full resolution, i only export in 1080 at the end) lossless quality, easy to use for the editing, no quality loss. The avi internal insn't always easy to playback and edit, depending on the software.

Storyboard, animation and design work : http://nathanotano.tumblr.com/
As I'm highly interested in animation workflows, I'm open to scripting new TVP functions for individuals and studios. Please don't hesitate to contact me!

Excellent thanks for all your advice it makes sense! Slowtiger - thanks for the advice about doubling up the layer - I was so wrapped up with trying to get the perfect brush that I forgot to duplicate the levels to make it darker! Stupid really as we've been doing exactly that for years in AfterFx!

JQuinn wrote: ... I forgot to duplicate the levels to make it darker! ...

just for info, another alternative is to apply an Alpha correction to "harden" the drawing's opacity,
(Keying/Alpha Control or Histogram/Alpha FX)
it's particulary interesting when you want to control the blackness of the line layer along the timeline,
f.i. during a camera zoom-in or out.

OK, your screen resolution seems fine, Quicktime should be able to open the file 1:1. Now I wonder which codec you used for the video? The artifacts look like you used something like AVHD or the like, which are totally wrong for animation. Could you render the video with Apple ProRes and look again?